Hello and happy Halloween. It is my favorite holiday and to celebrate I made you you a four hour long Halloween playlist.
It’s somehow October 31st? Omg where have I even been you guys I’m so sorry. Let’s not talk about the past though let’s talk about this actual tiny violin they sell at the American Girl store that I need desperately (have you ever seen someone make such an extended recurring bit out of personal tragedy it’s giving life is a highway). A fun biographical note about me is that I had an American Girl doll as a child and which one did I choose? Kirsten, the Swedish blonde. Okay go off self-hating nine year old. I lost her at some point (and by some point I mean like a decade or more later) and my mother still brings it up to this day.
In my time away from you I’ve been toiling in the Google Doc obviously, but also visiting with Tom Cruise’s acupuncturist, starting a peptide journey (this belongs in Sami Reiss’s blog or Chris Gayomali’s, not mine tbh), watching TV (Task on HBO, The Diplomat, and season 2 of Nobody Wants This, a show about a literal rabbi that is somehow afraid to ever talk about God? spoke about this on the Ringer Prestige TV podcast this week), and online shopping. What did I buy? Thank you so much for asking. I bought a vintage leather Ralph Lauren band jacket, some dark denim men’s Stussy jeans, and…a second leather jacket (a Ghesquière era Balenciaga motorcycle jacket from TRR).
I also saw the film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. I really wanted it to be good. I always want music biopics to be good. I (naively!) think they CAN be good. This one is not. This one is elder abuse. This one is the filmic equivalent of when old people have very large size font on their phones. I went on The Big Picture to talk about all the reasons it was not good, so you can listen to that if you care.
Anyway here’s what I’ve been listening to and reading this month:
The new Militarie Gun album God Save The Gun has been on repeat in this house. I feel like Ian Shelton really crawled deep into his “art as therapy” bag and the results are gorgeous. Standout tracks: “BADIDEA”, “God Owes Me Money” where MG go Killers-mode, ft. Missy from Mannequin Pussy, “Kick” (my personal favorite, co-written by James from Dazy with the Butthole Surfers-esque sprechgesang and the Killing Joke sample, a real 90s glory moment) and finally “Daydream” in which Ian brings out the acoustic and jerks tears all around.
Been self-harming with Blondshell ft Gigi Perez “Arms” which is off Another Picture, the forthcoming companion album to this year’s If You Asked For A Picture.
Wednesday’s cover of one of my (and everyone’s) favorite Guided By Voices songs, “Game of Pricks” for SXMU. It’s only available on Sirius XM which of course I have because I need to listen to Channel 30 in the car (Dave Matthews Band Radio obvi).
Speaking of Wednesday, the essay Karly Hartzman wrote for Vulture about breaking up with MJ Lenderman in the midst of making her new album is incredible. Confessional personal essays are a dime a dozen (gestures around at nearly all of Substack) and if I’m keeping it 100, they’re mostly really boring/shiny with artifice masquerading as vulnerability (no please tell me more about what you learned about the point of life while not using your iPhone for six days) , but Karly is such a beautiful and honest writer; she leaves no room for the banal. She catches you in the sticky molasses pacing of her thoughts and feelings, charms you with vivid details (“I filled my Marvin the Martian cup with tequila on our neighbors’ porch”) and then quietly delivers sentence-length gut punches, one after another. It’s a testament to her skill as a lyricist; she’s just an amazing writer, in any format.
The new Jay Som album Belong is so fucking good. I feel like Melina Duterte is a slept-on genius. A few years back I was lucky enough to get her to compose a theme song for the now defunct 33 1/3 podcast I exec produced with Prince Paul hosting, it was actually so good and if you’re bored you should go listen to it, the episode about Portishead’s Dummy with the RZA (I’ve lived so many lives). Anyway this whole record is fab but the duets really jump out, particularly the beautifully twinging “Past Lives” with hayley Williams and my personal favorite track, “Float” with Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World (what a king).
Also did you listen to the Bandsplain episode about Jimmy Eat World with Chris Ryan yet?
Love love love this new Glitterer song “Stainless Steel.” I’m so into this band. Ned Russin was the singer for Title Fight and I know people are still lighting candles in their bedroom shrines to that band but I find what he’s doing with Glitterer just as good tbh? They’re on Anti, a label that pretty much never misses, and I think they’re playing Coachella this year.
In other Anti news, it is zero precent surprising that I, a staunch fan of the music of both of the sisters Crutchfield and also Jake Lendiez, deeply fuck with today’s surprise Snocaps album (Waxahatchee, Allison Crutchfield, and MJ Lenderman) God I love when these mirror twins sing together (P.S Eliot hive rise up). I remember going to a Waxahatchee show on the Out In The Storm tour during a particularly bell jar-esque period in my life and Allison was touring with them I think and I just stood in the back silently baptizing myself in my own tears while their perfectly layered vocals enveloped me? We have fun around here!
Tom Phillips from Most Things released his snappy 10 minute EP from his other project Birdfeeder and I love it. It’s genuinely kooky (something I think music needs more of).
The new They Are Gutting A Body Of Water album Lotto was engineered in a lab for me? More sprechgesang! Are they the spiritual heir to MBV? Something to think about. CR says this album is giving Sonic Youth but idk (loved hearing Doug Dulgarian interviewed on Chris’ podcast The Watch, genuinely delighted by the way he speaks and also charmed by him refering to The Lox as The L-O-X, s/o Sheek Louch) . Anyway I have been on the TAGABOW (so fun to type) train for a while. This 2023 song was probably my favorite of theirs until they posted the demo for “Sour Diesel” on IG and now that is my favorite.
It’s well documented that I live for a 90 second song and this new one from This Is Lorelei is so goddamn catchy. It’s giving HORDE Tour in the best way possible (if you know me you know this is a high compliment, I would lay down my life for Blues Traveler).
Obsessed with this piece by Alissa Bennett who is possibly the coolest woman alive? Listen to her incredible podcast with Lena Dunham (cc: Good Thing Going) The C-Word, historical deep dives into the lives of women society has deemed insane (aka the other coolest women alive). Anyway she’s also an incredible writer and this piece she wrote (for a high prestige German art magazine, of course) is about many things, including The Sorrows of Young Werther, Kurt Cobain’s cardigan, and two nostalgia-paralyzed Gen-X brothers that she and her (our) friend Marisa Baldasarro (the best twitter account on earth) developed a deep, ongoing, and abiding obsession with, and the way those two topics intertwine is just exquisite.
I’m also reading Marisa Meltzer’s super fun Jane Birkin book and really savoring it as a break between the seven to ten trip-hop books I am slamming back. I mentioned to my dermatologist that Birkin never got any work done and that maybe if I had been the hottest woman in Europe for one to two decades I might not be here huffing nitrous for dear life while she tortured me with a UV light device for an hour and change. She said she thinks I still would be (rude).
Lastly I was profiled for SSENSE by the incredible Eliza Brooke, with photos by Jerry Hsu. (It is extremely on brand for me for this to transpire post well-publicized bankruptcy). This photo in particular is like, exactly who I am at the core of my soul. Today Jon Caramanica said Bandsplain is really the Big Gulp of podcasts if you think about it, and he’s totally right. If anyone at 7-11 is reading this, I am very down for a partnership. Please get in touch.
As always all the songs mentioned in this post live in the Fast & Loose playlist HERE
Inject this Snocaps album in my veins; it is giving me life today.